During this season, it is fitting to reflect on the mighty works God performed to free the children of Israel from Egypt. The ten plagues of Egypt were sent by God for several purposes. They instilled confidence in Israel, showing them that God worked through Moses and was a powerful God they could rely on. The plagues also weakened Egypt in wealth, agriculture, and leadership, leaving the Egyptians fearful of what would happen next. Most significantly, the plagues demonstrated the absolute weakness of Egypt's gods and the supreme strength of the true God. The Egyptians were deeply superstitious, attributing divine significance to countless elements of life, with gods for nearly everything. Many animals were considered sacred to specific deities or cults. The plagues directly challenged these beliefs. In the first plague, as recorded in Exodus 7:14-21, God turned the waters of the Nile to blood, striking at the heart of Egypt's religion. The Nile, worshipped as the god Hapi, was their lifeline, and God transformed this source of life into a bringer of death, stench, and misery. This act also profaned sacred fish of the Nile, further humiliating their beliefs. In the second plague, detailed in Exodus 8:1-4, God sent frogs abundantly across Egypt, invading homes and personal spaces. This struck at the goddess Heket, associated with procreation and childbirth, symbolized by the frog. The plague indirectly targeted the Nile again, as the frogs originated from this revered river, turning a symbol of blessing into a source of torment. The fifth plague, described in Exodus 9:1-4, brought severe pestilence upon Egypt's livestock, affecting cattle, horses, donkeys, camels, oxen, and sheep. Many of these animals were sacred to various Egyptian gods and cults, and this plague also impacted Pharaoh and the priesthood, who owned the largest herds, diminishing their wealth and status. Through these and other plagues, God exposed the impotence of Egypt's deities, proving His unmatched power over all their false gods.

God performed miracles through Moses and Aaron over several months to free Israel from Egypt. These began with signs such as a serpent swallowing other serpents, water turned to blood, and frogs summoned, all of which Pharaoh's magicians could duplicate. The following plagues of lice, flies, cattle disease, and boils on people and animals could not be counterfeited. Starting with the eighth plague of hail, thunder, and fire along the ground, the events quickened with locusts that consumed Egypt's crops. A thick darkness then covered the land for three days, preventing movement except among the Israelites in Goshen. On the evening of the Passover an angel of death struck Egypt's firstborn, resulting in at least one death in every house and the loss of many thousands, including members of the elite. This sequence of plagues severely crippled Egypt without destroying the nation entirely.

During repeated requests by Moses for Pharaoh to allow Israel to leave Egypt, Pharaoh had continually refused to let God's people go, and the nation had endured nine plagues of cataclysmic consequences. The economy of the nation was largely in shambles. Crops were ruined, and disease had run rampant. Since the third plague, God had also made readily visible a clear distinction between the captive nation of Israel and the Egyptians, in that the Israelites in Goshen had been spared much of the devastation that had ruined the rest of Egypt. By the use of the blood of the sacrificial lamb, God was about to make a final, absolute distinction between these two nations that would never be forgotten. Egypt suffered the devastation at the hand of God because it was a wicked, idolatrous nation. The plagues God meted upon the land of Egypt and its people were just as much attacks on her idols and lifestyle as they were punishments for the sins of her people. As just one example, the Egyptians worshipped the Nile River as a god, and when God turned its waters to blood, the life-giving nature of the river was destroyed, along with the power that the Nile River god supposedly possessed. The sacrificial blood, sprinkled or smeared by the bunch of hyssop, graphically represented a separation and a protection of Israel against the deadly havoc that God wrought upon Egypt that night. The blood ceremonially cleansed and protected the people inside those homes against the plague of death that struck a people who practiced the filthy abominations of godlessness.